XLVI. Student Life—Physical Side, Continued
In March, 1910, a national committee of seven,—organized
to revise the game of football,—convened in
New York City. Dr. Lambeth represented the University
of Virginia in this body. The following were
the radical innovations which they recommended: (1)
that the game was to be played in four quarters in order
to save the participants from exhaustion,—three rest
periods were assured thereby, instead of one as formerly;
(2) seven men were required to be in the line of scrimmage
continuously when the ball was put in play; (3)
the person who was carrying the ball was not to be
touched or dragged, pushed or pulled by his fellows,
—thus tightening up the mass and enfeebling the impact;
(4) the player making a tackle must have both
feet, or one foot, on the ground, thus cutting out the
flying tackle,—a manoeuvre which was the cause of nine
tenths of the injuries which were inflicted in games of
football.
The Faculty had been inclined to discourage the continuation
of this branch of sport at the University, in
consequence of the death of Archer Christian, a student
of great promise who had been accidentally killed in a
melée in one of the contests; but after the adoption of
the new regulations, they gave up all further opposition.
These rules were in force from the beginning of the
session of 1910–11. Until the stadium was completed,
which occurred about 1913, all the important football
matches took place on other grounds. How chivalrously
the University team bore itself in these foreign tours is
demonstrated by the record of the game which was
played in Boston with the Harvard team in 1915.
"Clean exponents of football the Virginia eleven proved
to be," said the
Boston Post. "Virginia's spirit was a
true exhibition of Southern hospitality. They helped a
Harvard man off the ground whenever an opportunity
offered, and not the least sign of unsportsmanlike play
was evident. Virginia made a great impression. Time
and again, these men helped foes from the ground,
and showed the best spirit of any team here for years."
In the autumn of 1915, the University team defeated
the team of Yale. When the successful players returned
to Charlottesville, the whole student body met them on
their arrival at the station, and drew them in a tallyho
to the Corner amid Roman shouts of triumph. The
painted score of that victory has not to this day been
effaced from all the railway-bridges in the neighborhood
of the precincts. It has been admiringly asserted that
the football team of 1915 attained the highest reputation
of any organization of that character which was
ever formed by the students of the University,—it travelled
nearly four thousand miles; played five games on
foreign soil; and competing with the most thoroughly
trained teams of the North and South, went down to defeat
but once. In the course of three years, the University
football teams had lost but three games, and
these were lost to the teams of Georgetown, Yale, and
Harvard Universities. Georgetown University, it was
asserted, had won her victory only by enlisting players
who were not thought to be purely amateur, and, in consequence,
the University of Virginia declined to accept a
second challenge from that institution.
The football record of the University of Virginia, embracing
the years from 1904 to 1916 inclusive, was as
follows:
| Year |
Won |
Lost |
| 1904 |
78 |
54 |
| 1910 |
112 |
37 |
| 1911 |
262 |
30 |
| 1912 |
568 |
256 |
| 1913 |
265 |
28 |
| 1914 |
353 |
38 |
| 1915 |
219 |
25 |
| 1916 |
106 |
172 |
During the spring of 1905,—the first season to follow
the establishment of the Presidency,—B. C. Nalle
was the trainer of the baseball team. In the beginning,
an absence of nine days was annually granted to its members
in which to respond upon the field to the different
challenges which they had received to play beyond the
bounds of the University; and if an acceptable reason
could be submitted, another day was added to this period.
The rule that the team must play either on its own
ground, or on ground belonging to some other institution
of learning, was occasionally revoked; thus the team was
invited in 1908, to play with college alumni residing in
Orange, New Jersey, and the Faculty permitted it to accept.
In April of the ensuing year, the University team
was defeated by the team of Harvard; and in the following
May, by the team of Yale. During the spring of
1910 and of 1911, there were one hundred and sixty-three
runs won and one hundred and forty-six lost. Of the
twenty-four games played in 1912, the University of Virginia
was successful in fourteen. Challenges were received
during this season from Amherst College, and
from the Universities of Princeton, Cornell, North Carolina,
Georgetown, and Pennsylvania. The game with
Yale ended in a tie.
In the course of 1911, a new policy was adopted.
Prior to that year, the University team had been sent to
all parts of the North at an almost intolerable expense
to the General Athletic Association; but a resolution was
now passed that the furthest point to which that team
should be dispatched, should be the field at Princeton.
The games in return were to be played either at the University
of Virginia, or at some spot as close at hand as
Richmond or Norfolk. It was in the latter city that
the next game with Yale was expected to take place.
About this time, a baseball league was organized by
twenty-two of the fraternities at the University, with the
public announcement that a handsome pennant would be
awarded to every winner. No one who had played as a
professional, or been a member of the University team,
was to be permitted to participate in the games of this
league.
During the spring of 1913, twenty games were played
by the University team, and in thirteen, that team was
victorious; in 1914, seventeen were played and ten were
won. Among the teams defeated were those which represented
the Universities of Princeton, Cornell, North
Carolina, and Georgetown. In 1915, twenty games took
place, and the University team was victorious in fourteen.
It was during this season that the team was defeated
by the teams of the Universities of Princeton, Yale, and
Harvard, although successful in contests with the teams
of the colleges of Amherst and Williams, and of the Universities
of Cornell, Michigan, and Brown. The season
of 1916 was made brilliant by numerous triumphs,—of
the twenty-five games played, sixteen were won by the
University team; Yale University was routed; and in a
game with the team of Harvard University, a tie resulted.
In 1905–06, the track organization comprised a captain,
manager, an assistant, coach, trainer, and fifteen
members. During the previous spring, the team had
won at Philadelphia the one mile relay race in the intercollegiate
contest, and at Baltimore an indoor relay race
in a contest with the champions of Johns Hopkins University.
In a second indoor race at Richmond, the team
of the University of Virginia left the team of George
Washington University far behind; but, subsequently,
that team lost in a two mile race with the same opponents.
In 1906, a large number of college teams assembled
in the Horse Show Building at Richmond, and in the
events of this meet the University representatives
took the foremost part.
The season of 1907–08 was, perhaps, the most memorable
in the history of the University team. During the
winter meets at Washington and Baltimore, numerous
points were won by the University runners, jumpers, and
pole vaulters. The two most distinguished participants
were Martin, the jumper and vaulter, and Rector, the
sprinter. Rector had won the reputation of being the
fastest dashman in America. One enthusiastic but discriminating
admirer, describing the powers of this wonderful
athlete, said picturesquely that "his work on the
track, in 1907–08, stood out like the Singer Building in
the mass of concrete and granite in the lower part of
New York." In the autumn of 1906, he ran the hundred
yards in ten seconds, and in the spring of 1908, he
brought this record down to nine and two-fifths seconds.
In the course of this season, he defeated Cartmill, the
inter-collegiate champion sprinter, who had left the English
runners far in the rear during the previous summer.
A few days later, he scored the world's record by making
the one hundred yard dash in ten seconds flat on a board
track; and in May of the same year, he reduced this record
to nine and two-fifths seconds. This run was on
Lambeth Field in a dual meet with the Johns Hopkins
University, and the victory was won on a slow track and
in the teeth of a high wind. But, in July, he was forced
to yield the palm to H. Walker, of South Africa, in a run
on the Olympic grounds.
During the session of 1908–09, meets took place in
Washington, Richmond, and New York, and in all, the
principal seats of learning were represented by their
champions. In each of these meets, the University team
won the one mile relay. Martin, a member of that team,
established and retained the new world's record for the
fifty yard hurdle. By the close of the season, the University
of Virginia had come to rank in this province of
athletics with the four greatest institutions in the Eastern
States; and her team continued to hold this remarkable
position during subsequent years. In one instance,
Rector again scored ten seconds in a hundred yard dash,
and five and two-fifths seconds in a fifty yard dash. In
1910, the team defeated the team of Johns Hopkins on
three successive occasions; and, in 1911, it proved to be
the victor in a field of three competitors at the Southern
Inter-Collegiate meet; and during the same season, it
also vanquished the teams of Georgetown and George
Washington Universities. But it was not so successful
in 1913. During the season of 1914, there were three
meets, in two of which the University team was triumphant;
but, in 1915, it was beaten by the team of Princeton
University, although it had defeated the team of
Johns Hopkins University.
In 1916, the South Atlantic meet took place. The
track organization of the University of Virginia had been
a member of this association during three years, and the
meets had been held on the Homewood Field at Baltimore
and the Lambeth Field at the University itself. At
the end of the fourth season, the University team was
declared to be the champion team of the South Atlantic
States. Its runners had won seventy-nine and one-sixth
points more than the combined points scored by the
Washington and Lee, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and
Catholic Universities, Richmond College, and the Virginia
Polytechnic Institute.
